Ansible playbook to save show command on Cisco devices

Sep222021

Very simple and easy Ansible playbook for Cisco devices to save output show command as a file.

In this example I show you how you can save “show mac address-table”, on many Cisco devices as you want.

Imagine that you have been given a task where a large company wants from you to login on each switches at 2000 locations and run “show mac address-table” and save outputs as a text file.
You will probably not login to every single switches one by one to complete the task.
If you spend 2-3 minutes on per location, this will be 6-9K minutes to complete it.

Use my solution and use these saved times to develop yourself or spend it with those you love!

For pretty output please be sure that you have already installed humman_log

1. Create an empty YAML file and name it mac_address_table.yaml with below codes:

   # @author [Hawar Koyi]
   # @email [hawar.koy@gmail.com]
   # @create date 2021-22-09 18:22
   # @desc [Network Automation - Save show command on Cisco]
   ---
   - name: Get port details and MAC-addresses
     hosts: Cisco
     gather_facts: false
     connection: local
   
     tasks:
   
      - name: Accespt ansible net hostname
        ios_facts:
           gather_subset: all
   
      - name: Save your show command to register
        ios_command:
         commands: 'show mac address-table dynamic'
        register: output
   
     #Save contents to disk
      - name: Copy output to file
        copy:
           content="{{ output.stdout | replace('\\n', '\n') }}" #
           #Change destination/direcotry 
           dest=/home/hawar/mac_add/{{ ansible_net_hostname }}_{{ inventory_hostname }}.txt
   
   #End of codes

   2.  Create an empty text file and name it hosts with devices IP-addresses and the defaults values.
   As you can see I only added one device, otherwise you can add more than one device, if they have the same username and password.

   [Cisco]
   192.168.10.123
   192.168.xx.xx
   
   [Cisco:vars] ansible_connection=network_cli
   ansible_network_os=ios
   ansible_user=cisco
   ansible_password=cisco
   ansible_become=yes
   ansible_become_method=enable
   ansible_become_password=cisco

   ansible_password: Device SSH password
   ansible_become_password: Device enable password

   3. Run this command:

   ansible-playbook -i hosts mac_address_table.yaml

   Saved file looks like the image below.